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Buntu Redempter

Buntu Redempter is from a small war-torn country in Africa, Burundi. He was born in Burundi and there for only nine months, then the war began and he exiled to Tanzania where he lived as a refugee. Finally he immigrated to the United States after being treated badly by the Tanzanian citizens and government. He moved to the U. S. when he was fifteen. Buntu loves computer engineer work and he wants to become a computer engineer, a writer, and a business man when he grows up.

I like the way people write poems and express themselves; how they feel, their experiences and all about their cultures. I feel so famous about reading my poems on the radio and in the Performing Arts Center. I want to be a poet.

I Am

I am from Africa, Burundi, dans les tambours,

From blood and dark places

From big mountains and lakes.

I am

From the words

Gun, shooting, death

From the feelings of anger and sadness

I am

From the promise of working hard and being patient

From “always anything can happen”

And “believe in working”

I am

From potatoes and beans

Rotten salads, elephant meat, corn,

Mangoes, cassava, bananas

I am from an ugly place,

From people with hate and revenge

From unfertile land where it never rains

I am Burundian

The entire universe,

Pray for us.

Scary Moments

I was young as a bird, when I moved to Seattle one year and a half ago, from the Tanzanian land. I was 9 months old when I moved to Tanzania from Burundian land, the land where there are no friends.

I came running on my mother’s back, running to escape the killers and save ourselves. No one was there to save or help us. In a red land covered with blood, I lost all my people except me and my mother. It was hard to live with the sounds of guns and screams and tear stained faces. Everybody wanted to get away. I felt like a hater of that place, a place with green leaves covered with blood, a land that can’t even grow plants, a place that even rocks disappeared because of the humans’ bones and blood in it and the smell which birds and butterflies can’t live with.

Lucky me, I made it and now I can smell the smell of garlic and this clean oxygen. Now I don’t smell the death anymore, I get rid of it. Now I don’t hear the guns and screams and I don’t see sad faces anymore, just music playing on the radio and my soul starting to heal.